New Recommendation: Add Lisk To The Watchlist As Coin With Possible Huge Upside

This is not a recommendation to buy LISK, but we are recommending adding to your shortlist as one to follow. High risk/Potential for huge gains in 2018

Since the word ‘cryptocurrency’ first entered our vocabulary, no one expected a flood of other cryptocurrencies to enter the market, one after another, within a short time frame. Without exaggerating, there are hundreds of cryptocurrencies out there. Tough competition, that’s for sure.

That being said, some altcoins have managed to persevere and capture some of the cryptocurrency market share. On closer look, one can see why – it is no longer enough for cryptocurrencies to simply be mere cryptocurrencies. The target audience – which includes computer programmers and IT experts – will only give second considerations to outstanding altcoins that deserve their attention.

Case in point – Ethereum, the second most popular network after Bitcoin (based on its market cap). This public blockchain platform can be used to execute peer-to-peer contracts using Ether, the cryptocurrency that is compatible with the Ethereum ecosystem.

One interesting altcoin that emerged in 2016 is Lisk. Listed as LSK, this cryptocurrency is currently has the eighths biggest market cap, at 45 million US dollars (at the time of writing).

Lisk is a new altcoin, having launched on 24 May 2016, so this rise of Lisk’s price is very noteworthy for altcoin enthusiasts. Here are 8 things to know about it.

#1 – It is a ‘modular’ cryptocurrency

The first of its kind, Lisk brands itself as the “first modular cryptocurrency utilising sidechains”. We’ll get to the sidechains part in a bit and focus on ‘modular’. As the name suggests, this coin involves ‘modules’ that serve as the basis of its design and construction.

The overall design is its trump card – the Lisk system allows anyone to use its ‘designing blocks’ to construct their own decentralised apps . The language of choice for Lisk for individual app construction is Javascript, one of the most popular programming languages. Loads of programmers know Javascript, so we can say that the applicability value of Lisk is quite high.

#2 – Utilises ‘sidechains

By this point, we are all familiar with the blockchain, usually defined as public ledger of all completed transactions. One problem that exists with blockchains is that it can be artificially bloated with test or fake transactions. When there are too many bad transactions, the ‘blocks’ get full faster and slow down the network (this is called ‘bloated’ network). No one likes a slow network.

Enter Lisk’s solution, the sidechain. Sidechains are additions to the main blockchain. Think of it like Post-It notes applied on book pages – you can add more value yet not clutter the main text. Sidechains can be attached to independent blockchains and serve as a place to put all the high-volume transactions without interfering with the main blockchain. As a result, this will ensure a fast network all day, every day (in theory). You can read more about sidechains in the whitepaper or Richard Brown’s simple explanation.

#3 – Former Ethereum core members joined Lisk

On June 8 2016, Lisk CEO Max Kordek announced the addition of Charles Hoskinson (ex-CEO of Ethereum) and Steven Nerayoff (ex-advisor for Ethereum) as Senior Advisors of Lisk, to facilitate Product Development.

According to Kordek,

“There is no one else in the world like Charles who has the vision to build a successful cryptography project and Steven, who has an invaluable entrepreneur insight after founding six companies and being a venture capitalist.“

We briefly touched this in #1, but this deserves a special mention. Lisk wants to be the ‘de-facto standard for blockchain applications and services’, that are ‘standalone, decentralised, blockchain-based apps developed in Javascript’. Decentralised apps (‘dapps’) has great potential to be integrated into a wide variety of applications, including ‘immutable storage, a decentralized federation of hosting, oracle services, or computation of smart contracts.’ (source for quotes)

“There is no public cryptocurrency platform which allows developers to easily deploy their own blockchain and build a JavaScript blockchain app on it… This will give millions of developers the ability to create their own sidechains, particularly around consumer applications, including games, social networks and the Internet of Things, but the same core functionality can also be used to develop and scale business applications.”

Basically, Lisk for programmers and developers is like easy-to-use WordPress templates for web designers. Instead of wasting time with complex coding languages, Lisk can be used to simplify the process of building, publishing, distributing and monetising applications without sacrificing quality.

#5 – One of the Most Successful Cryptocurrency Crowdsale

From February to March 20116, Lisk crowdfunded 14,052 bitcoins, or about US$9.76 million (as of current bitcoin price at the time of writing). That is a lot of money. It was the fourth-highest crowdfund for any cryptocurrency, ever.

#6 – As a Developer Tool, It Works as Advertised (But Small Sample Size)

How does a decentralised app (again, ‘dapps’) look like? The potential of the Lisk network, with its modular cryptocurrency and utilising sidechains is what Lisk is trying to show. In its main page, Lisk showcases some examples: Criterion (Concept; Proof of Existence), Dust (Concept; Decentralised Trust on Lisk), Discovr (Concept; A social network for artists), MarketPlace (Prototype; A Decentralised Store on Lisk) and BlockData (Prototype; Smart Home on Lisk).

A quick look in the Blockchain Application section in the official Lisk forum yields some more ongoing projects, including ideas for an online card trading game and P2P drone delivery.

#7 – Country Ambassadors

The developer community is a tight-knit community, so it’s little wonder that Lisk started a Country Ambassador initiative to promote the Lisk ecosystem and help provide technical support. So far, they have 11 country ambassadors who were cherry-picked (you can’t volunteer yourself) to act as community managers in their respective countries. According to this document which detailed responsibilities of ambassadors, they are not paid for this role (although bounties are available).

#8 – Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS)

Last but not least, you should know about Lisk’s consensus model. Each LSK carries one vote, and only the top 101 users with the heaviest votes (ie highest number of Lisks individually owned) will be able to cast votes to carry forward motions and have a say in problem solving resolutions. You can learn more about the DPoS model here.

Conclusion

Many comparison has been made between Lisk and Ethereum. However, CEO Kordek maintains that Lisk is ‘not competitor to Ethereum’.

Research-wise, Lisk has a higher ‘knowledge’ entry barrier for non-coders, so to fully understand and appreciate how it works, a background in programming won’t hurt. Like other altcoins, Lisk is also not immune to volatility. Since this cryptocurrency is very new, only time will tell if Lisk has what it takes to take off among mainstream Javascript coders, but there are certainly positive signals that they are heading in the right direction.

To wrap up, below is an infographic made by Kordek to show differences between Lisk and Ether.

About Suraya Zainudin — Suraya is a freelance writer specialising in personal finance, investing, nonprofits, women’s empowerment, and FinTech. An aspiring digital nomad, she blogs at ringgitohringgit.com. Follow the author on Twitter @surayaror

The information provided on this website does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, trading advice or any other sort of advice and you should not treat any of the website’s content as such. CryptoCurrencyClarified does not recommend that any cryptocurrency should be bought, sold or held by you and nothing on this website should be taken as an offer to buy, sell or hold a cryptocurrency. Do conduct your own due diligence and consult your financial advisory before making any investment decision.

Accuracy of Information

CryptoCurrency Clarified will strive to ensure accuracy of information listed on this website although it will not hold any responsibility for any missing or wrong information. You understand that you are using any and all information available here AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Price Risk

The price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are highly volatile. It is common for prices to increase or decrease by over 20-100% in some coins in a single day. Although this could mean potential huge profits, this also could mean potential huge losses. DO NOT INVEST ALL YOUR MONEY IN CRYPTOCURRENCIES. Only invest money which you are willing to lose. Cryptocurrency trading may not be suitable for all users of this website. Anyone looking to invest in cryptocurrencies should consult a fully qualified independent professional financial advisor.